Feting Feta Any Way You Slice Or Crumble It, This Brined Cheese Shines

ATHENS -- The Greeks eat more cheese than any other people in Europe, and
feta streaks way ahead as their favorite kind. As Panos Leontaritsis of the
Fage dairy here explains, ``For us Greeks, feta cheese does not supplement
food; it is food.''

Indeed, feta appears at almost every meal. Cooks mix it with spinach to
make the classic spanakopita, and with leeks, chard, and other vegetables to
make a seemingly endless array of other pies. They combine it with herbs to
make cheese bread, and with cheeses to make fritters, and with eggs and
vegetables to make omelettes. They stir it into dishes of baked pasta and
sprinkle it on platters of grilled vegetables. One of the many appetizers that
precede dinner is invariably a chunk of feta. Another may be a dish of shrimp
with tomatoes and feta or a plate of small phyllo turnovers or rolls filled
with mint- or dill-flavored feta. The traditional topping for the favorite
tomato, cucumber, and olive salad is a thick slice of feta and a golden
drizzle of olive oil.

Slicing is an important characteristic of feta, which gets its name from
the Greek word for slice. But unlike other firm slicing cheese, feta also
crumbles readily, so it is easy to toss into a salad or work into a bread
dough or mix into a sauce. This versatility makes it a useful kitchen standby,
and so though the Greeks and other Balkan countries have been making it for at
least 2,000 years, nowadays France, Denmark, Israel, and the United States
also make large amounts. Often they use cow's milk. Some Greek feta is also
made from cow's milk, but this gets serious cheese aficionados very mad
indeed. Leontaritsis explains, ``Feta should be made from sheep's milk or
sheep's milk mixed with goat milk. If you use cow's milk, you don't get the
right texture, and the cheese is yellow, so then you have to add decoloring
chemicals to make it white.'' He is delighted at recently developed
``protected designation of origin'' standards for feta. ``These are similar to
those used for wine. These standards, which apply to the European Union, say
feta must come from milk produced in Greek mountain areas where feta has
traditionally been made, and the animals must graze on local plants. And, of
course, the cheese must mature in brine.''

Storing the cheese in brine has a crucial impact on the flavor and texture.
The practice goes back centuries. Historically feta was made by farmers using
the simplest of techniques. They poured the milk into leather pouches and left
it until the curds separated from the whey. They pressed the curds into cheese
in baskets. Then they salted the whey and left the cheeses to develop in it.
This matured the cheese, and preserved it -- a necessity in the torrid Greek
climate. Some remote farms still make feta this way, often creating cheeses
with distinctive local flavors. However, dairies now produce the bulk of the
100,000 metric tons of feta that Greeks eat every year. Though dairies have
modern stainless steel tanks and refrigerating equipment, they still brine
their cheese for two months so it can achieve its characteristic salty taste
and acid tang.

Greeks emphasize the long heritage of Greek cheese-making. As early as 1184
BC Homer mentioned cheese being made in baskets. A millennium later the Roman
author Pliny reported on the excellence of Greek sheep-milk cheese.
Eventually, feta made its way to America with Greek emigrants. It's now widely
available in supermarkets and delis. Most brands in plastic packages are made
from cow's milk, but authentic Greek sheep's milk feta is also available.
Bread & Circus markets it under its own label. It also stocks a French sheep
milk feta called Valbreso, as well as goat milk fetas from France and Israel.